“Who is this friend?”
“One you don’t know about.”
Anna places one leg of the compass in front of the other and allows it to walk like a thin, stiff-legged fellow across the sheet of paper in her notebook, not dissimilar to the way I trudge around. I’ve started to trudge with age. If I have to do a U-turn, I take a number of supporting side steps rather than one firm, solid turn.
Sellers waves to me. He isn’t any more sober, nor is he more drunk; he’s level, I suppose you could say. He wants food.
“What do you two want?” I say to Edgar and Anna. “I have to move on.”
“I want lasagne,” says Anna.
“I’ll have the butter sole,” says Edgar.
“The butter sole,” I repeat.
“Can you add some extra capers?”
“Extra capers on the butter sole.”
“It’s a bit strange, maybe, but I once had a spoonful of date jelly on the side. Can you arrange that?”
“Date with the butter sole. Of course.”
“Date,” says Anna.
“Do you want date?”
“No, dates are . . .” She waves her hand in front of her nose and pulls a face.
“Ask him to over-fry the mushrooms a bit,” says Edgar.
“Crispy?”
“Borderline crispy.”
“And the butter browned.”
“Yes, browned butter.”
“What would you like to drink, Anna?”
“Apple juice.”
“And a glass for you?”
“I think I’ll allow myself a glass of the one from the Loire . . . ,” says Edgar.
“Savennières Clos?”
“Clos de la Coulée.”
“Coulée it is, then.”
BOAT
EVERY BIRD SINGS WITH ITS own beak, the Maître d’ says. This applies not least to Raymond. He draws out his vowels when he speaks. When he comes to order food, these long vowels blend with the notes being produced by the fat fingers of Old Johansen playing away up on the mezzanine. Old Johansen has drifted into a Rachmaninoff lullaby; it’s beautiful, but also fairly slow and deeply tedious, I must say, a strange choice for this time of day. The woozy Raymond orders entrecôte with the tune tinkling away in the background. He has a deep voice, Raymond. He sounds like a baritone. His order becomes some kind of miniature musical. He wants the entrecôte done medium well, and for the sauceboat to be “compleeeeetely” full of béarnaise, he says. To the brim. He adds that he only needs half a portion of onion compote. I say, “Wonderful.”
On the whole, mastering speech, says Edgar, is primarily a case of ignoring the embarrassing untruths we deliver in every sentence construction. Untruths and inaccuracies, not least. Raymond doesn’t struggle with that. His order of entrecôte and a full-to-the-brim sauceboat, which he delivers in harmony with the music, is a joy to the auricles. The ears. To us waiters, who might find ourselves dealing with all kinds of stuttering during orders, it’s nice, from time to time, to be served a decent order, if I can put it like that.
Bratland is worse. His language doesn’t add up; the syntax creaks and groans. The order goes wrong. “If you wait two minutes, I’ll write up the day’s specials on the board,” I say. “Why can’t you just say them?” Bratland asks. “I like to write,” I say. I bring out the three-legged stool, climb up onto it, and stretch as far as I can: the board is high up; everyone needs to see it. As I reach the d in “tournedos,” the chalk makes a shrieking sound which causes Bratland to swear. He digs one finger into his ear. I continue with “coq au vin,” the chalk screeches, and Bratland swears again. “You’re cutting my favorite music to shreds with your racket,” he says. I ignore him and draw a firm line between the food and wine recommendations; the chalk squeals so loudly that Bratland huffs and puffs again. “Like a bradawl to the brain,” he mumbles. I put away the stool and point to the board. Bratland squints. “I can’t read that scrawl,” he says. I explain that it says tournedos and coq au vin, but the truth is that I’ve written “turdonés” and “couq au vergin.”
“I don’t want that anyway,” says Bratland.
“Wonderful,” I say. Sellers orders confit duck thigh, like always.
“The petits pois are still ripening?” he asks rhetorically.
“They’re far from full maturity.”
“You know, I want them basically unripe.”
“They’re absolutely verging on unripe.”
“And could you ask the chef to add a tiny splash of veal gravy to the thyme gravy?”
“Of course,” I say.
•
The dinner guests start to arrive. Edgar and Anna’s food is ready, and I take it out to them. Anna genuinely claps her hands as I place the lasagne on the table.
She is probably in the last six months of still making such adorable outbursts. They peter out and disappear for good after kids turn ten, don’t they? Everything adorable gets phased out and replaced by something different. Some unenchanting trait. What is the opposite of “delightful”? “Despicable.” “Adult.” The chef’s lasagne is fantastic, served to Anna in a small earthenware dish and still boiling and sizzling.
“It’s red-hot,” I say.
“I know that.” Anna smiles.
“They’re starting to get lively over there,” says Edgar.
“Who?” Anna asks.
“Them around that table,” says Edgar, nodding to Sellers’s alcoholic milieu.
“What’s wrong with them?” says Anna.
“They’ve drunk many beers,” I say.
“How does that work for you?” says Edgar.
“How what?”
“Them carrying on like that?”
“It’s who they are,” I say.
“I’m just asking,” says Edgar. He knows that Sellers is given a long leash in here.
“I have to move on.”
“Indeed, they want their food now,” Edgar says, making a grandiose gesture towards Sellers and the group.
I serve everything as ordered, with the exception of the sauceboat for Raymond, which I not only do not fill to the brim, I put provocatively little béarnaise in. Raymond wrings his hands as I place it on his plate.
“Goodness me,” he says with that singing, deep voice. Without a murmur, I take the sauceboat back to the kitchen and fill it all the way as he requested.
“Is this some kind of performance?” he asks when I come back.
“I beg your pardon?” I say.
“Are you making these serving mistakes on purpose?”
“Are you stealing our shenanigans?” Bratland butts in.
I move my head, neither a nod nor a shake. It’s more an unwelcome jerk, a tic. It feels like I’m jolting awake after nodding off for a second. Bratland sneezes, which sounds like someone has slapped his face.
“You’re a good waiter,” says Raymond. “You know full well what I asked for. I asked for the sauceboat to be full to the brim. Then you come out here with a scant boat. Next, you fill it to the brim and act like nothing has happened.”
“Don’t you start, too,” Sellers says, either to Raymond or to me, I’m not sure.
“The boat is full now,” I say as Raymond says: “It’s not me stirring things up.”
“Let it lie,” says Sellers.
“Why take a walk with the cursed boat first?” says Raymond.
“Forget the boat,” Sellers orders.
“It’s dropped,” Raymond says, holding up his hands in surrender.
Sellers steers a large chunk of duck thigh to his mouth. He chews discriminatingly. “Not much veal sauce in this,” he says.
“I asked the chef to add a little.”
“I think he forgot.”
“He usually pays attention,” I say.
“Then you’ll have to drill him again,” says Sellers.
“The chef is his own man.”
“Ah, is he cooking for freedom in there?” says Sellers.
�
�The question isn’t free from what but free for what,” I say.
“Well, aren’t we combative today,” says Sellers.
I clap my hands together and walk through the restaurant, over to the bar, in a wide arc, where I collect a rancid, disappointing chardonnay, go back to table thirteen, and fill Bratland’s glass to the brim without him asking for a top-up. He responds by taking a sip so large that his eyes snap back in his head.
CRITIQUE OF THE FEMALE BODY
THE CHILD LADY GETS UP from the marble-topped table by the entrance and walks over to Sellers’s avant-gardist alcohol table. The Bar Manager, the Maître d’, and I all observe this. What business does she have with Sellers? She exchanges a few words with the intoxicated man and introduces herself with the same choreography she used on the Pig, Graham, and, to an extent, also on me. The Child Lady never creates anything new, I think; she just re-creates herself.
Eyebrows are further raised when she tips forward and grants Sellers what can only be described as a bear hug. All of her grace is released into his open arms. He wraps them around her and squeezes. Then he holds her in place, with an adult hand on the back of her head, in a prolonged, solid knus, as they say in Danish, the language of Europe’s deceitful people.
The Bar Manager leans in and whispers that it’s astounding that she suits these men as well as she does the others. Spending time with both the Pig and Sellers on the same day is an artful move. It’s to do with something deeper than grace, she says. When you look at this woman, you might suspect that there exists no beautiful surface without terrible depths behind it.
“But does she know them?”
“We’ll see,” says the Bar Manager. She’s in a good place now.
The embrace ends, and the Child Lady’s hands remain on Sellers’s shoulders as they hold each other’s gaze like old friends. They hug again. Then she giggles. She turns to the two other drunks in Sellers’s group and sits down between them, on a chair which she most boldly pulls from table eleven. All I can do is set another place.
“Thank you, but I’ve just eaten,” she says to me. Oh yes? Have the mushrooms I arranged been lost in oblivion? The order I fulfilled under an hour ago, has it been forgotten? Is she trying to cover up this double play, this overlapping, by feigning ignorance, suddenly sitting here at Sellers’s table? With brisk movements, I undo my setting a place for her. I pick up the cutlery, napkin, and glass in reverse order, as though I’m being played backwards. It’s impossible not to exhibit my bandaged hand, the punctured and covered blister. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel like the Child Lady, Sellers, and not least the razor-sharp Raymond are watching it.
“I’ll take a glass of pinot noir,” the Child Lady says.
“Jawohl,” I say firmly.
I spin around in confusion and run the crumber over a couple of departed tables. What am I saying? This is madness. She wants pinot noir now? What does that mean vis-à-vis the Pig’s white burgundy? With age, it takes so little for something to go wrong in me. If I think of one thing or another, it goes wrong. If I see this person or that, it goes wrong. If I don’t master this or the other, new wrong-going. The constant feeling that there—there—it went wrong. Oh no. It went wrong again. Why do things never work out for me? Not that anything ever actually goes wrong. But there is wrongness in me when the Child Lady sits down at Sellers’s table. I blurt out German words which belong neither here nor there.
There’s something about the Child Lady’s age. She looks disproportionately young. At the same time, she seems so aged and experienced that she appears fatigued and slightly worn. How old is she? She’s porno-old. She wears a number of rings on her fingers, indicating capital at its most serious. One of them sits on the knuckle of her middle finger, glittering and quivering like only diamonds can—it’s almost baroque, I want to say—but she makes it go with the rest of her getup, which is a combination of expensive design and piece goods. I can see both Miu Miu and Dries van Noten, plus a slightly weak Balenciaga, and at the very bottom a surprising pair of shoes. They’re relatively clumpy and colorful, with thick tongues like old skater shoes. But they are surely new; they could be new editions. Airwalks, maybe? What an idea. The Child Lady looks like a heavily made-up kid. When I arrive with the pinot noir and lean forwards with my acute stoop, I think that it might be age which makes her child’s face seem more defined, sharper, that she’s not so heavily made up after all. I let the wineglass approach the table without a sound and think that I mustn’t turn towards her now; I’m not crazy; I can’t turn around and stare her in the face. You don’t stare your guests in the face from close-up. But I’m interested in this notion of makeup versus age. I’m reluctant to admit it, but standing here, with the glass still making its way towards the table, I get the urge to turn my head to the left and give the Child Lady’s face a good stare. I arc over her right shoulder and let the glass silently meet the covered tabletop. I can feel her warmth, I’m so close. She gives off a faint scent of . . . the 1980s. Almost masculine. What is that smell? I hold the stem for a moment while I lean over her, in my handsome waiter’s jacket, in my waiter’s trousers, in my worn but still solid and well-cared-for shoes. My trusty shoes. That’s how I’m standing, with my dry hair and my so-called nerve face, which I always try to tighten or hide behind my mustache. That’s how I’m standing, thinking that it would be interesting to inspect the relationship between makeup and age on the Child Lady’s face. So I turn and stare. She looks back. The distance between the tips of our noses—hers Greek, mine prominent—is the breadth of two Swedish sourdough loaves, no more. I should never have arranged this “meeting.” She parts her lips and teeth, her mouth, in other words, pulls her tongue down from the palate with a click, and says: “Jawohl.”
I slowly loosen my grip on the elegant stem, filled with a light, good wine made from the Côte d’Ors’s big grapes, pinot noir, and pull my hand away. I place it next to the bandaged claw behind my back and try to stand up straight. My lumbar protests. I straighten myself up like a cadet, with a quiet grunt and a stern face, until I end up in some kind of vertical position. There’s nothing to be said to her “Jawohl.”
•
Nabokov had a funny approach to interviews, Edgar has told me: he insisted on writing down his answers first, and sending them to the journalist, who could then work out the questions. Here’s the answer: you tell me. And the question? What the hell are you going to do with yourself after this blunder?
Of the opportunities for withdrawal I have here at The Hills, every one is time limited. I can go into the kitchen to seek refuge with the chef, but he’s probably irritable and vibey as usual. I can yap a bit with the regulars—I’m allowed to spend more time on them than the others. I can go down to the cellar to fetch things, but that’s something I tend to avoid, as I’ve already said. I often get a chaotic feeling down there. I’ve already done a loop with the crumber. I charge over to Edgar and Anna.
“Everything OK here?” I say formally.
“Yes,” says Anna. She has eaten most of her lasagne.
“Slow going over there?” says Edgar.
“It is what it is,” I say.
“Yes . . . and that latest addition complicated things, I suppose.”
“What?”
“Well, do you know who she is?”
What is Edgar suggesting? Does he know her? I have a sinking feeling.
“Excuse me?”
“Her, the girl.”
Her, the girl? Is he suddenly a specialist in the Child Lady? I stare at him but can’t read his tight face. God forbid. The perfume. Was the perfume for her? It was musk she smelled of. What kind of charade is Edgar playing? Does he have an interest in the Child Lady? Is he speaking with a forked tongue? It’s years since he announced his distance to the opposite sex. His distaste. But what’s going on now? This might sound unfair and immature—he said that time—but the female body has lost its appeal. Here comes a critique of the female body, Edgar said. That was w
hat he called it. A critique of the female body. I nodded and smiled, the way I always do. There are two reasons, he said. That was how he put it; logically. On the one hand, and this is nothing new: the mediated, maintained, tuned, harmonized, sculpted female body hasn’t just made the ordinary, standard, common, everyday body that the vast majority of women possess superfluous. The mediated female body has made the day-to-day female body unbearable. The everyday body has no appeal because the mediated female body is constantly forced onto us. Fair enough. But on the other hand, the mediated and seemingly attractive female body—the one left as an object of desire now that the everyday body is over—is linked to the most vile form of monetary turnover, to such a degree that it voids itself as being attractive time and time again. It’s a body which, if you stare at it, stares back. And it’s the eyes of the hawker you’re looking at. The tanned woman’s body, with hundreds of thousands of squats on its résumé, and millions of followers on sharing platforms, is the hawker’s face mask. He has pulled that woman’s skin over his skull and is staring back at you like some kind of Leatherface, says Edgar. Anna had been there that time, too, but she was quite small, maybe in the first or second year of school. She had an exercise book with her. Edgar couldn’t have said all this in front of her now. Do you know, girls, those of you aspiring to the mediated body, he said, how idiotic you look when you follow the nasty hawker’s dictate? Do you see? He was pointing his finger then, literally. I can tell you the following: it makes you look retarded. The body you’re striving for is ideological. It’s the hawker’s ideology camouflaged by skin. All I see is the sly hawker, said Edgar. And the hawker’s plan doesn’t make me lustful, let me tell you. Excuse me, but isn’t it time these women covered themselves up a bit? This exposition of meat and flesh can’t go on. Whenever the sun comes out, and we’re going to the shop or out for a coffee, they force us to look at their hideous ass cheeks hanging out of their too-short denim shorts. Why do I have to have these sad cheeks in my field of vision, making me stare and see the hawker staring back at me? How retarded can they be? I see cleavage. Cover yourselves up, I’m saying. I see a navel. Cover it up. We don’t want to see your navel. We never want to see thighs. The sight of a stupid, stupid female ass is the last thing we need to see now, in these times. It’s sad for you. It’s sad for us. It’s like we’re reading an ironic epilogue. The female body is a freed slave who has come back to tyrannize her former owner. Look here: everyone has strings up their butt cracks. The female body has become synonymous with the hawker’s business interests. That’s how Edgar talked. But now he has met the Child Lady and calls her “her, the girl”; he’s changed his tune.
The Waiter Page 9